DESERT STORM FILLED SOVIET MILITARY WITH AWE

David Evans, Chicago TribuneCHICAGO TRIBUNE

American operations in the Persian Gulf war showed such a stunning integration of high-technology reconnaissance and furious strike forces that Soviet military analysts concluded their armed forces would be behind for years.

Soviet military experts completed their observations of the war last fall. A translation of their report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency provides an in-depth fascinating view of the war from Moscow`s perspective.

The swift victory over Iraq clearly left the Soviet military leadership apprehensive about America becoming a potentially arrogant Godzilla on the world stage, a power convinced that ''all problems can be solved by military force.''

As an example, the Soviet report said that the Americans were able to detect Scud missile launches within 30 seconds.

''The proficiency of the responsive strikes'' testified to the effectiveness of the unprecedented integration of reconnaissance and strike systems, the report said.

Indeed, it characterized the gulf conflict as a proving ground for the weapons of the 21st Century: ''The U.S. accomplished the practical testing of reconnaissance-strike complexes for employment of precision weapons . . . under combat conditions.''

It went on to say that the ''U.S. military-industrial complex'' is now refining the performance of those systems to ensure continued supremacy.

The repeated references in the Soviet report to America`s new

''reconnaissance-strike'' capability led an American military officer to remark, ''It`s obvious that we have it, they don`t have it, and they don`t like it.''

It is apparent from the report that the Soviets were stuck with trying to attribute Iraq`s dismal military performance either to the inferiority of its Soviet-made equipment or to inept Iraqi generals.

With a major damage-control problem on their hands, the Soviets tried to explain away the desert defeat by declaring that most of the Iraqis` Soviet-built equipment was out of date. But, mostly, the Soviet report came down against the Iraqi generals, criticizing them for not anticipating the huge armored end-run around their forces in Kuwait.

The inflatable decoys were complete with metal reflectors and heat sources to fool allied radar and infrared systems, the report said.

''It wasn`t the problem they say,'' countered an Air Force officer involved in assessing the effectiveness of the air campaign.

Many of the tank decoys looked like metal shipping containers sitting on the desert sand, he said.

''Most of the time, the decoys didn`t fool our guys. Maybe one time, but not twice,'' said this officer. He added that in many cases the Iraqis failed to dig up the ground behind their tank decoys to mimic the distinctive trail left by tank treads.

''When the ground forces swept through, they didn`t find that many decoys,'' he said, discounting the program`s scope.

The Soviet report also gave high marks to the U.S. effort to fool the Iraqis into thinking an amphibious invasion would take place on the coast of Kuwait, and it also credited the effectiveness of American jamming and other electronic warfare techniques in blinding and confusing the Iraqi defenses.

These decoy, deception and jamming activities on both sides come under the Russian heading of maskirovka, which translates roughly to ''the masking.''

In battlefield logistics, the Soviets ironically may have transposed their own weakness in this area onto their reading of the U.S. supply effort. In their report, the Soviets asserted that after the opening onslaught, the allied air campaign was hampered by supply shortages.

''We didn`t have these shortages, as evidenced by the fact that we doubled our aircraft sortie rate on Feb. 23 (the day before the ground offensive began),'' he said. ''At the end of the war we had four times the amount of ammunition we needed. . . . ''

Pentagon officials also dispute the Soviet view. A logistics expert conceded there were ''spot shortages, perhaps, but there were no major hiccups of spares and fuel.''

The greatest supply stresses involved new systems, like the F-15E fighter-bomber, where the Air Force had not yet procured adequate stocks of wartime spares.